Hermann Adler: The King’s Chief Rabbi

When Chief Rabbi Adler died in 1911, his friend, Sir Adolph Tuck wrote: ‘The fame of Dr. Hermann Adler will be handed down to posterity and the great place occupied by him, widely recognised as it is already in our generation, will loom still more vividly in the future, when a broader view of his achievements will be possible.’ Even King George V sent his condolences.

Yet today Hermann Adler, called ‘My Chief Rabbi’ by Edward VII, is largely forgotten. The man who kept the community Orthodox, who helped the country absorb some 300,000 Jewish refugees from pogroms in Europe, who gave over 2,000 sermons and addresses in a 30-year career as Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi, is hardly known. In this new biography Derek Taylor has researched his life and proved that, far from the view of Adler as subject to the community’s lay leaders, he was, in fact, a Rothschild on his mother’s side and very much his own man.

With a foreword by Lord Jacob Rothschild, a fascinating life unfolds of a man who fought his many opponents to a standstill, and tackled successfully the greatest challenges the community had faced since the Restoration.